856D.00/12–145: Airgram
The Ambassador in the Netherlands (Hornbeck) to the Secretary of State
[Received December 12—9:23 a.m.]
A–112. To the Secretary of State and the President. In the course of giving thought to the situation and problems in the Netherlands East Indies, it has occurred to me to speculate regarding ways in which developments there may affect interests of the United States.
I find myself constrained to believe that among the more important of the possible consequences of the conflict which has been permitted to develop in that area, there is likely to take place a shifting of the direction-from-which, and therefore of the kind and the degree, as regards outside influence over the attitude and the destinies of the native peoples in the East Indies and in adjacent areas.
Should Dutch political influence in the Netherlands East Indies become more tenuous or disappear, and should there not be an adequately compensating substitution of British or American political influence, it would seem that there would tend to be created a vacuum which in turn would invite an influx from without of an influence from some other quarter or quarters; in the nature of things—with political trends what they are—that new influence would be likely to be oriental rather than occidental; the chances would be in favor of its being Chinese or Japanese; and, as between these two, the greater likelihood would be that it would be Japanese. There might, of course, conceivably be a Soviet Union contribution.
Any such tendencies and trends, should they eventuate, would inevitably affect and be affected by developments in India, in China, in Japan, and in possibly considerable extent throughout southern Asia and in parts of Africa.
There is potentially in the making a political alignment of the peoples of the world in two great and conflicting groups: On one hand the “white” peoples of the Occident together with those “colored” peoples in various parts of the world who remain under their influence and partake of their ways of thinking, and on the other hand those “colored” peoples who reject or escape from the influence of the “white” and occidental peoples and who, entertaining and committed to concepts contrary thereto, are susceptible to the influence of a leadership such as Japan has for four decades offered, has recently attempted to impose, and may be expected again to try to exert.
Important among American interests, in my opinion—and, in the light of courses pursued during recent years, apparently so conceived [Page 1177] in the formulating of American official policy—is cultivation and maintenance of the alignment wherein not only the United States and the British Empire but the Soviet Union and China are within the group wherein occidental concepts and policies predominate. Any weakening or curtailing of occidental political influence in the Southwest Pacific may be expected to add to the difficulty of maintaining that alignment. Contrariwise, maintenance of that influence in that area should be expected to contribute toward perpetuation and strengthening of the structure of that alignment.
More and more, the evidence which becomes available indicates that the present situation in the Netherlands East Indies is a product of Japanese inspiration and a projection of the Japanese war effort. In a very substantial sense, it becomes apparent that certain Japanese military authorities in the Netherlands East Indies (especially in Java), having themselves received orders to surrender, began at once to make use of the “native” peoples in continuation of the Japanese begun warfare against the Dutch (and other peoples of the Occident). Japan was “defeated” in the war, and Japanese high authorities made their “unconditional surender”, but Japanese armed forces, through and with elements in the native population whom by various procedures they have made their dupes and agents, are still engaged in activities which might well be described as “vicarious guerrilla warfare”. One cannot but wonder how widely and how fully this is understood by and among the peoples of the various countries which, attacked by Japan, have fought as allies for the defeat of Japan and destruction of Japan’s machinery and mechanisms of aggression.
It certainly is an important American interest that machinations of any and every part of Japan’s armed forces be promptly frustrated and that destruction of Japanese machinery and mechanisms of aggression be quickly and completely consummated.
It would seem, then, that important interests of the United States are involved in and are tending to be adversely affected by recent and current developments in and with relation to the Netherlands East Indies; and that, in these premises, pursuance by the American Government of a “positive” policy with regard to the situation there not only would be warranted—whether as a “war” measure or as a “peace” measure or as both—but should be welcomed by most of those countries with which the United States has been and is most effectively associated.